Sarah Martinez

Book Review: From Where You Dream

Sarah Martinez — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:27:33 GMT

Robert Olen is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the Francis Eppes Professor in English at Florida State University. From Where You Dream was originally a collection of Butler’s lectures that Janet Burroway edited into book form. In Burroway’s glowing introduction, she explains what Butler does in the lectures:

“His self-declared obsessions have to do with the descent into the dreamspace of the unconscious in order to discover the yearning that is at the center of every person and therefore to every character, and with the moment-to- moment sensual experience of that character’s story.”

This book must be read from beginning to end. To skim, or try to get a general sense of it will be to lose the power of his tone. He gives measured and specific advice not only on getting to the dreamspace, but his comforting words on dealing with rejection, insights into the state of modern literary fiction never seemed more appropriate. He addresses, as do all master teachers, the importance of reading and he explains how to read— both for pleasure and for criticism.

“You should read slowly. You should never read a work of literary art faster than would allow you to hear the narrative voice in your head. Speed-reading is one reason editors, and not incidentally, book reviewers can be so utterly wrongheaded about a particular work of art.”

Butler’s methods are very prescribed; about how to tap into the dreamspace, how and when to write, even how to journal:

“…return to some event of the day that evoked an emotion in you. Record that event in the journal. But do this only—only moment to moment through the senses. Absolutely never name an emotion; never start explaining or analyzing or interpreting an emotion.”

Butler argues convincingly for the effectiveness of his methods throughout the book, one of which is using index cards to record scenes and structure the novel. He outlines how to fill out the cards, and why one must not vary from his suggestions. Another example of how specific he gets is in an exercise later in the book where he has a student recall an anecdote with the most sensory detail possible, focusing on where in the body a sense and emotion comes from. He asks his student questions like, “How did you know your brother was behind you?” and “Where did you feel his presence?” There is also a written exercise that focused students on an object that evoked anxiety. These, as well as his discussions of how dreams and films work, illustrate how we already deep down know how to get to the core of a scene, and the corresponding emotion.

This was my favorite writing book for many years. I am happy to find that everything that struck me as important when I first picked it up is still very much relevant to today.

About Me Page to Archives

Sarah Martinez — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:57:31 GMT

After over two years I have accumulated enough professional credentials to update my about page with more impressive material. I still want to keep this up somewhere in case anyone wants to get a better idea of where the darkness and bizarre commentary come from, and I know you do!

Literary Heroes: Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Marco Vassi, Anne Rice, Richard Russo, Stephen King and Clive Barker

Current author favorites include: Henry Miller, John Daniel, David Foster Wallace, Sandra Cisneros, Robert Boswell, Junot Diaz, Vladimir Nabokov and Meg Wolitzer

THE PAST

Born in the South, and raised on both coasts, Sarah Martinez has seen and done a lot. Some might say too much, but where's the fun in that? Sarah says: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger, but that doesn't mean it won't leave a mark." She thinks of her stories as a way to show off the marks and hopes for rave reviews.

The days spent fishing, camping beside deep mountain lakes, exploring hillsides covered in Huckleberries, to the culture shock of living in Washington DC, the people she met, and places she landed as a runaway, all make for lively conversation and reading material.

She tells outrageous stories about scary rehabs, sadistic counselors, escape attempts, and life afterward with a manic depressive mother who was heavily involved in Republican politics. Her life is a comic stew of events, both shocking and hilarious.

Sarah wrote her first book and self-published it at the age of seven, when she wrote the original words and pictures to the children's title which shall remain nameless, lest her critics judge her unfairly.

Sarah had a hard time adjusting to life on the east coast, and at fourteen began running away from home; at one point making it all the way to Los Angeles. As a result over one year of her life was spent behind the cold concrete walls of a warehouse in Springfield, VA, known as Straight, Inc. After this she spent several years attempting to find herself before moving back to Montana with her mother and sisters. She was to see her father rarely thereafter.

Sarah found growing up a difficult task. From the age of eighteen to twenty six she lived with a convicted sex offender and watched way too much porn. At the age of twenty six she finally woke up and graduated from Seattle University with a degree in International Business, believing that if she got an English degree she would end up broke.

THE PRESENT

She is married with two lively daughters and finds that life with a family and career is a constant balancing act.

She finds inspiration in everything from the comments of Rush Limbaugh to the music and performances of Marilyn Manson and most recently Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel.

She loves to ski, dance the Argentine tango, and read, read, read.

Back to Early Mornings

Sarah Martinez — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:09:44 GMT

It feels like forever since I was up early and actually productive. I should NOT be blogging at this hour, sapping the magic flow I have at this time of day--the reason for getting up this early--flow that should only be used for fiction writing, but I wanted to mark the occasion.

My grandmother died December 17th, and this on top of an incredibly busy year end made any sort of creative work impossible, almost anything impossible really. So now that I am back at it, wish me luck, this book if due NOW!

My First Panel Appearance: Nov. 20th at 2pm

Sarah Martinez — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:29:10 GMT

For the first time ever I will be on a panel! As an editor! I will be appearing with two other wonderful editors from the NW Independent Editor's Guild on Sunday November 20th at 2pm at University Bookstore in Seattle. Come check us out, wish me luck, and admire my blue hair and stack of old Nanowrimo manuscripts.

Book Review: The Golden Theme

Sarah Martinez — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:21:29 GMT

The Golden Theme

By Brian McDonald

Libertary Editions 2010

The author has an impressive set of Hollywood credentials. From the back cover of the book:

“Brian McDonald has taught his story seminar at PIXAR, DISNEY FEATURE ANIMATION and George Lucas’s ILM. His award-winning short film WHITE FACE has run on HBO and Cinemax and is used in corporations nation-wide as a diversity-training tool.”

Also, impressive was the fact that Charles Johnson, a National Book Award winner wrote a glowing forward for The Golden Theme.

Think of this as a seminar as opposed to a writing text. The main purpose of the book is to highlight and give examples of ways to find our common humanity. If you take nothing else from the book, it will be the theme that “we are all the same.” Even the bad guys.

If you are having trouble creating realistic characters your readers can identify with, McDonald includes powerful examples of ways to imagine yourself in someone else’s skin. He also points out ways we are more alike than we might think. Villains still need a dose of humanity to make them believable and our heroes cannot be too perfect, or the audience will have trouble identifying with them.

One especially effective example the author gives is of having to imagine the character of a slave holder. After explaining the historical circumstances that created a climate where slaveholders may have lived in fear for their lives, he asks us to imagine a motivation for being especially harsh.

“Find the thing that would make you behave as the cruelest of slaveholders and you will have found his humanity and your own.”

McDonald explains that the purpose of stories since the beginning of time is to give us valuable survival information, and to soothe our souls through the magic of story, letting us know we are not alone. The Golden Theme is a less a “how to” and more of a reminder of a higher artistic purpose.

“Your job is to let people know that everyone shares their feelings—and that these feelings bind us. Your job is a healing art, and like all healers, you have a responsibility. Let people know that they are not alone.”

Phenomenal Speech at Writers on the Sound 2011

Sarah Martinez — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:13:51 GMT

John Daniel who I already blogged about once, has generously shared a link to his speech so anyone who was unable to attend the conference will be able to read it.

http://www.johndaniel-author.net/oddsandends.php#wots

Edmonds Writers on the Sound

Sarah Martinez — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:49:34 GMT

This was an excellent conference. No agents or editors so the focus was just craft and networking. They capped the attendees to 200 so there was also a feeling of intimacy and friendliness.

John Daniel was the featured speaker on Saturday afternoon. Wonderful talk, I've already told three of my other writer friends about how great the talk was. I took his poetry class. Poetry for me... what a concept, and I learned a lot and have so much more to do now on my own. I may even have a new opening page for my novel.

What I loved the most about his talk and the message in his class was finding that by evoking particular images, you can evoke a specific emotion in your writing. This was something I thought I understood, moved on from and then somehow over the weekend, the real power of that concept hit home. I am inspired to learn more and start my own practice of harvesting images and trying to place them together to make something that might effect someone else.

If anyone else is curious about this author, click here for a link to his site: John Daniel-author.net.

Writer Rescource: Robert Olen Butler

Sarah Martinez — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:20:10 GMT

Among many other things, Robert Olen Butler won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his collection of short stories, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain and is the Francis Eppes Professor in English at Florida State University. In 2001 he recorded seventeen webcasts where he let the world watch him create a short story from beginning to end. This is an important resource for any emerging writer, and it can be found at www.fsu.edu/butler.

Taos ready

Sarah Martinez — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:47:46 GMT

As of Friday I will be away from internet connection....that's the plan anyway. No twitter, no facebook, no email. Just me, other writers, my books and my words. I'm almost ready, doing my last minute conference prep, only this time I will be gone over a week and the prospect of missing the family is very real.

Conferences, though busy, are usually times to reconnect with the writer inside and remember what my goals are. She is also tired of continually having to collect her thoughts and start again. I hope I don't spend the whole time missing my interruptions. This is the first conference I will attend where writing and reading are the focus so I hope I'll have enough distraction. This conference will be my church. I hope I am up to the task. As a young Argentine once said, "I must Fukus."

My manuscript has been edited by a very wise professional who made excellent revision suggestions, and I will have a whole week with Priscilla Long to polish sentences. After that I will spend two days contemplating my memoir(s). It seemed like a good idea when I signed up, but now that my ulcer is back i'm not so sure.

Book Review Part II: Wilderness by Robert Penn Warren

Sarah Martinez — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:56:03 GMT

I said in my last post that the test of this book would be if it stuck. It has, and how. When I was rewriting a short story to send in to an anthology, I kept thinking about how I was using color in the room descriptions and even in the dialogue. The imagery in general, the pacing of the story and the way the author left out bits of information or manipulated them to make the reader uncomfortable, also came back when I was rethinking the way I presented information for my own readers. Especially in a short space, the techniques RPW used are especially effective-- something a poet I discussed the book with mentioned as well. I feel like it is all coming together: my study, my discussion, my writing.

What this says to me is that this book, or maybe just the action of reading closely and focusing on technique, has come back to serve me already. If anyone was put off reading Wilderness by my blog post, I would say I am much more ready to recommend it to other readers, and especially other writers, than I was before.

Book Review: Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War by Robert Penn Warren

Sarah Martinez — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:31:38 GMT

The true test of this book I think will be if it sticks with me. I won’t know that until a few months from now. At this point I am laying myself open a bit to those who better understand the mechanics of the art of writing.* Please be gentle with me. I hope this post can serve as a way to pull in feedback and more for me to chew on so I can grow as a writer and a reader.

This book is triggering some sort of artistic attack. I read this because I wanted to understand the work of another writer I admire who cited this book as an influence.

As an aside: Robert Penn Warren’s poetry works for me. That says quite a lot since I only have about three poets I can say I enjoy at all. This I found to be a relief! I have always been drawn to vivid imagery (Henry Miller being another example). It is maybe easier to focus on the words and images when I am not trying to keep track of a story--something I had a hard time doing in Wilderness.

What interests me about the book are the poetic tricks my writer friend talked about. I LOVE the idea of laying down a code that only people who are really paying attention will tune into, or even better to maybe paint a picture they themselves aren’t aware they are looking at. Yet one more reason to get back on the poetry study I was working through a while back.

The author uses basic color in a vivid way, repeating words like white over and over, or green, or going on and on mixing the way he repeats the word stone with other descriptions of words like gray, slate, and other things that call to mind a certain solidity and coolness. (I am starting to sound like an English professor wannabe on meth.)

What bugs me about myself here is that I am giving the author my patient attention and thoughtful consideration because I know he is someone to pay attention to. Would I have caught this if I was reading the words of one Stanley Kotex or Philbert H. Schlong from the PNWA conference last year? I doubt it. This scares and bothers me.

One thing I can rave about: the characters in the story are not black and white, they are all in the middle of moral and ethical difficulties. They are real. This renews my faith in the human mind’s ability to see the various shades of gray in our experiences and characters (ourselves). So I am thrilled to say I didn’t miss everything!

One example from Wilderness: A character who studied the bible all his life, wanted to be left in peace and found he had to kill the “’scripters” who came to collect him to avoid going off to war and killing any more people. After this he had to live in the wild to avoid being found. One night he wakes his wife up laughing (the giggling and laughter throughout the book make me think half of the cast is insane) and says:

“…the Lawd God said thou shalt not kill and then put a fellow in a tight whar he had to kill to keep from killen.”

What would the writer’s digest book on dialogue say about that one? Here is probably an example of knowing the rules and then bashing them to smithereens.

Back to the character’s dilemma: when you read what this guy turns into, it does make you think the entire fucking world must have been then, and still is, totally off it’s rocker and there is no such thing as sanity, morality, or right and wrong. I compare this to the way things work today and feel not a little silly for believing anything different.

Earlier in the book one character explains the necessity of conscription.

“…when the heroes are dead, you have to fill the ranks some way.
Even with ordinary mortals. Who much prefer to stay at home and make money and sleep with their wives.”

None of that sounds familiar right? All war books seem to end up being relevant at least in this way.

Again, what bothers and humbles me, is how I will read and consider a writer’s work when I know the author is important (this author won three Pulitzer Prizes for God’s sake!) but if I just read this as a manuscript submission I would not have given it more than ten minutes, if that. Too hard to follow. Great details I would say, but if you lose your reader by the second page what good is the rest of it? I would have made suggestions that would have been detrimental to the vision of the book. As an editor, and as a reader, I wouldn’t have finished the book to draw the conclusions about madness, because I wouldn’t have seen the way he pulled it all together later on. The reason I would miss all this is because it wasn’t obvious by the first two pages eh? To sink in, to be effected takes time. Something almost nobody gets anymore in an age of kindle samples where the first few pages are critical, the same with trying to grab the attention of overworked agents and editors. **

If Robert Penn Warren changes the way he refers to characters--changing from a name, to a description, to a pronoun-- and it confuses me and I can’t tell what is going on, or I am annoyed because I have to go back and reread, what does that say about me? I have no generosity or open mind apparently when it comes to my reading material. I want it to be safe, comfortable and easy to move through.

I have been fighting this--the most depressing thought imaginable: maybe Jonathan Franzen is right that I am losing my ability to concentrate and focus! I always want him to be wrong, but continue to come across some stinky slimy nugget of truth to what he says when I least expect to.

Here are a few of the more random lines that make me feel like I am missing something because they don’t sit right:

“Adam uttered a grunt, or moan.”

Or how about this one:

“He found himself against a little door. The door gave under his pressure and he slipped in, into total darkness. At least it was totally dark as soon as he pushed the door closed behind him. Then he fell.”

Really?

“At least it was totally dark as soon as he pushed the door closed behind him.”

That line had me shaking my head, scratching my scalp and wondering what was wrong with me because I wanted to laugh. It was like Twilight all over again.

Here’s another that begins a chapter:

“The eight maniacal scarecrows burst into the glade.”

Is this a place where a great author made a boo boo? I doubt it. I have to believe someone of this caliber means what he says and says what he means. So where does that leave me if I just don’t like it? Don’t appreciate it and read it as downright bad writing?

As a faithful reader I have to believe that RP Warren knew what he was doing. I have to. He slips into passive voice at random times and you see the word “had” over and over and then it disappears. At times you almost can feel the silence and stillness in the room by the way he shortens the lines, repeats words, etc. The author slips a few times into addressing the audience as “you” and I can’t see any reason for doing this.

Again, is there some technique I am woefully unaware of? All of these together made this a difficult read, though strangely it went fast if that makes sense, even with all the rereading I did to backtrack and figure out what I missed when something happened that didn’t make sense.

About the content, I think anyone looking for time period details would find lots of good ones in here: the sutlers, the way people talk, the funky facial hair, the games people played outside their tents, the awful things people did to each other, and what people on the ground really thought about the whole business. I really appreciate when people don’t fall into pat moral categories and just want to get on with their lives. This resonates and feels honest. We are not all heroes in the face of injustice, racism, apathy, greed, bullying, lust and all the rest of it. Some people overcome and some just try to get by.

In the interest of further understanding this author I will also read All the King’s Men. That may be a different read.

Any insight would be appreciated. In the end I felt I got out of this book more than I put in but the experience of reading in general has me feeling again like I have to buckle down, study harder, read more and figure out why I didn’t get most of what the author was trying to do here. I have also been reminded why I may need to be a more generous reader. OR, do I need to knuckle up as it were and be more confident in my opinions? I know what I like and what I don’t. Somehow blowing this particular author off as I would Suzanne Collins doesn’t sit right with me. Something tells me there is an opportunity for growth here. I call on my friends who like to discuss books and exchange ideas to give me feedback and insight.

Thanks for reading.

*I can imagine that MFA or PHD who needs to believe that 100K in school loans is worth it can now be secure in the knowledge that you do know something valuable and indeed, at least in this tiny corner of the world, life altering!

** Except that I did it and continue to do it. Several of us are reading Infinite Jest over the summer. MUCH more accessible, humorous, and still wordy as all get out. Maybe the difference there is the voice? It speaks to the part of me that loves all things McSweeney’s, the part of me that can’t give up the run on sentence or going off on tangents that may only seem relevant or humorous to me. It is a spiritual thing, I think.

Really good, important books are still being read and talked about and even with technoplogy and tiny attention spans. I am just one example of how literature is still working even at this level.

Book Review: Tropic of Cancer

Sarah Martinez — Sun, 29 May 2011 00:01:44 GMT

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

In short this is an excellent book, especially for writers: vivid, visual, voice out the wazoo, layers of details and artistry and all the rest of it.

He does like to call women cunts. He does like to bitch and whine.

See the latest edition of Line Zero and order a copy if you want to read the two page review I got to do on this book.

Book Review: The Stoned Apocolypse

Sarah Martinez — Sat, 28 May 2011 23:50:02 GMT

The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi

I am so grateful for this book. This is one example of how the written word has the ultimate power to transcend everything: class, time, prejudice, politics, fear, death. Marco Vassi died over twenty years ago and when I read this I felt like I had just made a very cool new friend.

I read this because it was on some list of classic erotic books. It is so much more than that. Given my history with Straight and running away, and the rest of what happens to a fourteen year old when she crosses the country on her own--I tried forever to figure out how it had affected me—hating the role of victim that people who were supposed to know liked to pin on me as a result --this book spoke to the person I was at fourteen. I felt like he was speaking from the great beyond and going, “it’s all good.”

A quick description of the book comes from the back cover flap:

“The Stoned Apocalypse is Vassi’s autobiography, a chronicle of his cross-country trip on America’s counterculture byways. Vassi’s relentless quest for the perfect union of the spiritual and the corporeal provides a rare glimpse of one generation’s sexual imagination.”

We get to follow him through all manner of different cult “trips,” from the Gurdjieff meetings held off Park Avenue where “the mood was one of psychic constipation,” to the Scientologists, to a commune in Oregon, a Swinger’s club, San Francisco bathhouses, and all over the country crashing in random flop houses.

One thing I continue to refer people to is his description of working in a psychiatric facility. He confirmed my belief that many people enter the profession with a vague notion of helping people but with all too human fallibility and end up causing more harm than good. Someone had finally validated my feelings of outrage and disgust with the entire Straight experience.

The book also gave me a great way to learn about a culture and time in our country’s history I would have no other way to experience at such a personal level. I finally felt like I got this whole hippie thing. The piece of understanding I got was the innocence of the time.

After I read this I had a much better understanding of the 1960’s and the mindset that was innocent enough to believe there was still such a thing as a free ride, a free life, a free mind and body. I got to see what all that looked like, smelled like, tasted like, and became with the aid of all manner of drugs-- a spiritual experience. His commentary was at times comic, tragic, sweetly innocent and naïve, and cynical depending on what was going on. I envied him these experiences and was also glad I didn’t have to go through all that to come to some of the views he arrived at and expounded on in later books. When I read the last lines I felt sad, grateful, and a longing to make things different for him even as I felt so much of what he said resonated in my own life. I wanted to go forward with as much curiosity, honesty, and compassion for other humans as he did.

The sense of freedom and validation as a writer I got while reading this was wonderful. Richard Curtis wrote the introduction to the edition I have and one of the lines I think sums up what I like about this book and his other books:

“What distinguished his books from the rest of the pack was the application of Vassi’s intelligence. He knew the mind is the most erotic organ of all.”

This is an important book. For me it was not fun in a cheerful way but in the sense that I got to experience everything without leaving the comfort of my life. It reminded me a little of Tropic of Cancer only it was much more easy to follow. This book is different than anything I have ever come across. It is not smut. It is not strictly a memoir. It isn’t even exactly a manifesto but I can understand why he had a cult following.

His words encourage me to be more open to every experience I have, to live more fully in every aspect of my life. Crazy as it sounds, it has even stuck in my mind in ways that allow me to be a better wife, mother, to pay closer attention to my husband and kids, and try to see the world through their eyes. This book is still impacting my life, I still refer to it in conversation and I hope through this review others will start to rediscover this book that I consider to be a classic and one of my very favorite books.

Book Reviews added to my blog and site

Sarah Martinez — Sat, 28 May 2011 02:21:18 GMT

Why do book reviews? I am a reader. I love books, I love readers. How cool would it be to remind people who also like books about some of the better ones like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the forgotten ones, like The Stoned Apocalypse, the underappreciated ones like Reading Like A Writer, and the lesser known ones like The Writer’s Portable Mentor. My tastes are eclectic, I hope to find people who like me, appreciate a broad range of unique and well written books.

I also believe that to write well, one should read-- a lot. Whenever possible I will try to point out anything I have learned from a book about voice, pacing, detail, etc…whatever element of craft the book may have helped me improve. My primary goal, however is just to draw attention to cool books.

I also see this as a way to build an audience for my novel Bad Romance when it comes out. If I can draw readers who like the same sorts of quirky books that I do, maybe they will also like mine.

For now book reviews will be part of my blog which has the extra benefit of getting more blog posts up. I seem to be able to get about two a month up, which I am told by the folks in marketing is too little. If I add book reviews to my blog I can probably get even more posts that way.

When I review a book I will post it on my blog and will post a link for the title of the book. Check back often as I will continue to add more.

The categories and books I plan to cover are:

Erotic/Underappreciated (not porn):

The Stoned Apocalypse, A Driving Passion, The Eye

Classics:

Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, Wilderness, Mansfield Park

Writing Books:

Writer’s Portable Mentor, Reading Like a Writer, From Where You Dream, Strong Opinions, The Golden Theme, Nabokov’s Lectures

Contemporary:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Freedom, Twilight, Infinite Jest, Wolf’s Rite

Kindle Guilt: Part 2

Sarah Martinez — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:29:00 GMT

Did I mention that my kindle is also equipped with an Oxford English Dictionary and has the capacity to google unfamiliar references?

I can imagine all sorts of things happening as the result of kindles and other e-readers gaining popularity. I know for me a few other ways it has revolutionized the way I work are the following:

I can read my manuscript, make changes and reload it, read again and continue in this way, seeing it more or less as a “finished product” as many times as I need to. I can make comments but it is inconvenient to tinker too much in there so I save the line editing for computer time. When I read on the kindle I keep my eye on the big picture issues instead of miring down in the little things I want to fix.
I read for others in much more pleasant surroundings than ever before. I still remember reading a manuscript for the agent I worked for on a plane back east. The battery only lasted two hours on the computer so that was all the reading and editing I got done on a six hour flight. Later I stayed awake while the family went to sleep hunched over the computer, trying to hide the glow of the screen.
No more bookcases? Maybe just one more…I put a question mark there because I am still buying the books that are too expensive on the kindle or I feel the need to actually write in them. That will likely never change. Some books need to be interacted with at a tactile level.
I love the feature on kindle where I can highlight passages and post them on Facebook. I’ve gotten some good discussions going that way, discussions I never would have at home with my husband who has only read five books in his entire life. And I don’t have to drive to a book group. It has helped me not only advertise good books, but communicate about them with others who have already read the ones I am posting about.
It’s the great equalizer! See blog post by Katie Flanagan.

Is my view too rosy and optimistic? I haven’t pulled my head out of this novel long enough to sort through the latest news in the world of publishing. How does it look from where you’re sitting?

Kindle Guilt: Part 1

Sarah Martinez — Tue, 17 May 2011 22:52:00 GMT

When I look in the mirror I find that my lips are bright pink from all the Kool- Aid I’ve been drinking…now I’m spreading the insanity halfway across the country.

I got my aunt a kindle this past week. She is a huge reader and also a very smart woman--one of the original Ms. women in the 1980’s. I’ve just recently learned what a big deal she was and every conversation I have with her leaves me in awe that I had someone so fascinating in my family and totally took her for granted. She has agreed to be one of my readers for my novel Bad Romance. Her comments on the first 50 pages of an older draft were among the most honest and insightful I’ve gotten anywhere.

I was preparing to send her the latest version, all 400 pages, and it occurred to me that after I spent $40 printing it, another $20 sending it to her, and another $20 for return postage, I am over halfway to the price of a kindle! I can upload the manuscript directly to her kindle and save all that, not to mention the paper. She can make comments and I can also access these (she doesn’t have a computer) when she’s done, again saving time and money.

My aunt will read anything I give her. Over Christmas she read Freedom and I finally got to talk to someone who had the right generational perspective on that book, the chapter length issue and is also familiar with the political view of the way the world is evolving. Recently I mailed her a copy of White Oleander and Crying of Lot 49 so she would have more points of reference when reviewing my work. It cost $16 to mail two books. For almost the same price she could have purchased them on her kindle and saved again: the postage, paper and time.

She is thrilled with it but in her thank-you note expressed concern about the pricing on Amazon and she worries that authors are not getting paid enough for their intellectual property. She also voiced concern that Amazon would lower book prices to the point that they could put bookstores out of business. After that her view of how things went something like this: now only Target and Costco will be the outlets for books that general consumers have access to and there will be no more room for new authors. Also, she believes that casual readers won’t buy a kindle so in one more way the reading public will shrink.

My view is more optimistic. It may be flawed but as with all things only time will tell. More bookstores may go out of business--that seems to be the trend. This, like the fact that drinking two or more Mocha Coconut Frappuccinos on a daily basis will cause me to gain weight is a fact of life that I would rather not think about.

I love books: paper and ink books. The places where they are kept have the same effect on me that churches or car shows have on other people. So I have no idea what to say to this point, but I feel the same concern, even as I happily purchase more and more books electronically. Is this what people felt like when they were happily driving around in their shiny new Model Ts while the buggy whip factories began closing their doors? Does anyone even care about the buggy whip factory anymore?

I believe at some point kindles will either be free or will be available at minimal cost, maybe even lent out at libraries and almost everyone will have access to them. More readers equals more sales. I also wonder if in another five years phones, ipads, iphones, kindles, and netbooks will all have merged into more or less one device that can do everything and we won’t have to carry so many gadgets around. Wouldn’t that be nice?

In this world, where Facebook and twitter rule, an author can post her work-- and if it is good work-- people will post links to it all over the internet and happy consumers will be able to download that work to their kindle and/or order a paper copy and read away. My view of things is that we will all be reading more, not less. And by more I do not just mean 140 character bits either. If I can read a book that cites Darkness Visible three or more times, I am more inclined to impulse purchase the book and read it than I would be if I had to haul my butt off the couch and hit the library or bookstore.

Too optimistic? Maybe, but still…I am reading more than I have in years, now that children are more independent and hubby has figured out that reading time for me equals uninterrupted soccer time for him, and having a kindle has made it easier still.

Do you have a kindle? Are you resistant to purchasing one and if so why? Am I a bad book lover because I own one?

Next week I’ll go over the other ways I use my kindle in my work.

Whidbey Island Writer's Conference Part 2

Sarah Martinez — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:01:00 GMT

This year’s conference was one of the best experiences for me. I knew what I went there to accomplish: networking, learning, and if all went well, pitching. I came away with some very encouraging feedback, finding out that the type of things I address in my novel definitely fall in to the literary category and that I am doing better than I thought. I got an invitation to submit my manuscript to the agent I came to meet with as well as feedback on what he would like to see changed before I send it.

I first met Bharti Kirchner at PNWA last summer. I took her short story class which was one of the most useful classes I attended at that conference. When I found out that she was doing manuscript critiques for this conference on Whidbey Island I was excited. Her insight would go a long way toward making real improvements. When I met her and went over my manuscript I found her comments were both very constructive and surprisingly complementary which gave me a huge boost of encouragement.

Bharti Kirchner, Sarah Martinez, Priscilla Long
Photo credit: Loretta Matson

Terry Persun is an author I have spoken with at several conferences and always found extremely helpful and refreshingly realistic and honest about why we do what we do. I find at conferences, my goal is usually the same: to weed out the people I really need to connect with and follow them until they talk to me. Unlike past conferences, this year I focused on authors and teachers. This year I got to sit next to Terry at dinner and chat about literature, the current anxiety around who is reading and what they’re reading, and I got another good dose of perspective about what I am aiming for and what is most important to me.

Sarah Martinez, Terry Persun
Photo credit: Loretta Matson

On Sunday after Terry and a panel of other presenters spoke on independent publishing in general, Jon P. Fine, Director of Author and Publisher Relations for Amazon gave a presentation to a very full house about all the services Amazon offers authors. He fielded questions-- and there were many-- on everything from free author websites, to various paid services to help you independently publish your book.

As a consumer I have been grateful to Amazon for several reasons: the biggest being they made it easy to track down all those obscure porn star biographies, religious, political, and historical texts, as well as the books on brainwashing and cults that I needed for researching my novels. On top of it they saved me all that driving time and gas money when they offered to ship the books to me in two days! Unless you have small kids, and the understanding that you have maybe two minutes worth of time to make a decision in the store, you won’t understand what a huge gift all of this is.

Here again it looks like they are shaping up to be a one stop shop for a different type of consumer-- the independent author. (He also mentioned the many ways Amazon can work for the traditionally published author as well.) I liked hearing about the option as a sort of fall back in case I do decide to go it alone. I find it interesting to see the turn out and wonder if it is half for the charismatic dude giving the presentation or if it is just as much for the interest in independent publishing. I remember the heated arguments I’ve watched unfold in a few other self-publishing workshops at previous conferences and wonder what has changed?

Also, as someone who has recently been annoyed with these big authors talking about how no one is reading important books anymore, hearing him say he thought people were still going to keep reading and mentioning Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, and Phillip Pullman in the space of about a half hour had me jumping out of my seat with happiness.

Validation. Encouragment. Information. Reality Check. That was what this year’s conference was good for, and a much needed three days to reconnect with people who care as much about this work as I do and give me more to think about and work toward. This, I now believe is the real purpose of the writer’s conference, so I definitely got what I came for.

Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference: The High Point: Priscilla Long

Sarah Martinez — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 23:16:00 GMT

I had hoped to get this up last week but two days after the Whidbey conference ended, the family and I took off for Montana and grandma’s one hundred first birthday. One of my most trusted readers needed my revised manuscript by the 6^th, and I needed to get two other projects in by the 10^th. It was in short total insanity in my heart and mind for this last week since the conference ended. It was excellent however: among other things I got a much needed distraction from the sinking feeling that everything was about to change yet again*.

Bharti Kirchner, Sarah Martinez, Priscilla Long
Photo courtesy Loretta Matson

In the virtual triumvirate of writers and teachers that makes up the bulk of who I learn from these days, most of you already know Priscilla Long is at the top. In that cosmic way things work out, I got to drive her back and forth from the conference!

This meant an additional six hours with my hero, above and beyond the three hour class on the sentence she gave the first day of the conference. I tried to limit my gushing to five minutes, it may have been more but I hope it was always in context. It was incredible to listen to Priscilla and Carolyn Wright, (another presenter) discuss poetry, scholarship in the internet age, Vietnam and activism, grammar and punctuation, and to have discussions with her about one of my favorite writing books: Robert Olen Butler’s, “From Where You Dream.”

I asked her and Carolyn what they thought about the fracturing of our minds due to advances in technology. This is an issue that Franzen’s comments got me curious enough about to poll anyone over fifty. We also talked about Junot Diaz, and my recent essay for Line Zero after I asked if I could steal a quote from Susan Sontag that she used in her class. And to top it all off, she looked at the first few pages of my novel and gave me excellent feedback on it as well. She confirmed in the voice that holds the most authority possible, that I am on the right track and the instincts I had about my novel were right, plus she gave me suggestions on concrete things to do to make it better. In the sea of voices and opinions we all wade through in pursuit of a better book, sometimes it is hardest to learn to listen to our own first, and also figure out when it is best to listen to others, and who those others will be.

I take away not only the practical lessons and suggestions she gave me, both at the conference, and during the car ride, but also this lesson: if I keep trying to move forward, working as hard as I can, I will be rewarded--eventually. Events around this conference and in the past month have also given me confirmation of this. Lately I have been presented with bigger and better opportunities, more useful and insightful feedback, and the growing certainty that I have found my place. For every muddy mud puddle of uncertainty I wade through; the times when one too many people say, “it’s not believable,” or the looks on my children’s faces leave me feeling like a bad mother, or hubby’s comments confirm I am an inattentive wife, I make adjustments as I can and continue on, clinging to the words of authors I admire to get through. This time I got my first vision of how excellent it could all be if I keep at it, and I got a good dose of much needed encouragement.

*Separate blog post to follow.

Time is Now

Sarah Martinez — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:57:00 GMT

I love to read, I love how I can start with an inkling of a thought in my head, read two or three books, articles, or listen to a writer talk and suddenly the ideas in all three gel and I have something, incredibly profound and yes, even earth shattering…that is until I read something else and find some other articulator has already said the same thing.

Well I’m not to that place yet, so I decided to go ahead and post this. Two big famous literary writers who I follow via interviews have said they are just flat out not writing, they’re too busy performing, giving speeches, signing books, and shaking hands (listen to what Chuck Palahniuk said about the stinky hand before you start dreaming about fame and adoration). Promoting it seems is a full time job.

This thought occurred to me: Does this mean that just in this simple way I have it better than these famous writers do? Maybe they’re taking a well needed rest from the demons in their heads and in a few years they’ll be back at it again, better than ever. I hope so because these are people I love to read and the thought of not reading more from them is sad indeed…still, this got me thinking.

If I get up on time, I can get in easily 6 hours a day to work. Wow. My husband is a saint, takes kids so I have time to write. With the time in the evenings and weekends he gives me I have time to reread, rewrite, outline and all the rest that takes so much time after the words have actually been laid down. I knew not marrying a reader would pay off sooner or later.

I am at my best when I’m still half asleep, in a pretty good place a few hours later. The rest of the day is best for essay writing, blogging, outlining, and all the rest that doesn’t require the morning brain. Fortunate since this is the time when I am most apt to be disturbed by screeching, crying, or sappy children who do still need me and I still need them.

I just finished Tropic of Cancer and am partway through a biography of Henry Miller. He also got serious about his writing at 36, like me, and went off and scrounged around in Paris so he could write and live his own version of the artists life. How romantic, warped and twisted (he left a wife and child to do it) but I see how my own life is working this way as well, without all the drama (I got that out of the way in my teens and twenties when all the rest of them were learning important craft stuff in school. Oh, the envy I nurse when I read about these types: no kids, no job, just school, writing and reading, but do they know what a gift this is when they have it?).

When old Hank got famous in his later years he didn’t have any more time to write because he was so busy entertaining all his admirers. You can take that in many different ways, but these days I look at it like this: as an unpublished, unknown writer I have an incredible advantage, a phenomenal gift, and that is this: time.

People spend tens of thousands of dollars in MFA programs with the main goal being that they are supposed to have time to write and also important, to read. With husband and kids this is still sometimes a challenge but definitely possible and I have it. Lately with my work going better than it ever has, like the Bionic man: “Better, stronger, faster.” And I am also reading some incredible books and I can’t help but feel I may be better off than Henry, than the MFA students, than the famous, the important, the adored: the prize winning authors.

I am not saying I don’t want to publish, of course I do, and I imagine it is a lot to hope for to have that many people want to read my stuff that I would ever have the problems with time management that these guys do...still…I wonder if this is the stage, like pregnancy, where you have to enjoy what you have, the still free time, the still quiet house, the still peaceful life before what you’ve been pushing so hard for comes to pass and all that time is gone, gone, gone and you finally see how good you had it and it's too late.

Now that I’m flowing and really feeling it, I am in awe every day that I have the time and all that I need to really throw myself in to this life, and this is the amazing thing: I don’t have to give up my family to do it. That would not be possible if I didn’t have the beautiful, patient, understanding and devoted husband that I do.

After so many months, so much up and down, all the travel, angst, and all the rest of it, I see progress and I’m loving that but the most important thing is that I am spending time on MY work. While I still swap critiques with other writers, and find I get quite a bit from trying to figure out why something isn’t working for me in their work, or even better why it is; the majority of my time is spent on my work. My. Work.

I keep thinking about what Franzen said in his talk about the importance of being loyal to myself and my work and not letting guilt or anything else get in the way, even when it doesn’t look like it is going to pay off. It may be that I have finally figured out how to set the rest of the noise aside, at least for now. What a wonderful place to be this is. Now I get to say what I want to say, the way I want to say it and spend hours trying to get it right. Twisted and weird it may be but it’s mine.

I am still growing and perfectly fine with that, and I have been lucky in the last year to have met some wonderful writers who have encouraged me and made suggestions that have strengthened my work in so many ways. So I have the community that is so vital for me, the small but growing skill set, and the essential ingredient- time.

Maybe the recluses of the literary world have it figured right, the thing is just to make sure you carve out a way to write, and to keep writing and then not let anything get in the way of that.

I hope I am never in a position where I don’t have time to write, and I like the notion that right now, this time in my life is maybe the best it will ever be. What a concept.

I am now a Line Zero Regular Contributor

Sarah Martinez — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:26:00 GMT

More good news! I will now be a regular contributor to Seattle’s own fabulous literary and arts journal Line Zero. I will have my bio up on the website, and you can now reach me via email there as well. This means that every quarter at least one of my pieces will have a home. The really exciting part is that Line Zero will have booths at both PNWA and Bumbershoot so my work will have massive exposure.

This comes at a particularly interesting time, when I am again pulling inward, focusing on the creative side, finding out what I need to say, whether it was influenced by Junot Diaz, Marilyn Manson, Jonathan Franzen, Lady Gaga, Marco Vassi, James Horner or my own kids crayon drawings. Since this journal celebrates not only the literary arts but music and photography as well I feel I am in excellent company.

Their submission period for the next issue is open, come check it out, maybe your name will appear alongside mine.